Columns? (Word 2003)

Is there an easy way of inserting columns in a word document that are *not* newspaper style? I.e. when you fill up one column, it *doesn't* go to the top of the next column? For comparing passages from two different sources, say.

I was documenting a plagiarism case, and I wanted to have the student's text in one column, and the matching internet source material in the other column. I ended up fighting with text boxes (getting the size and position just right was a pain, and I wondered if there was an easier way of doing it.

Re: Columns? (Word 2003)

<P ID="edit" class=small>(Edited by fburg on 08-May-06 05:28. I forgot to include the Compare feature)</P>Since you're using Word 2003, there's another feature you can use. I think this came in with Word 2003 but it doesn't matter in your case since that's what you're using.

Keep your student's document as it's own separate Word document. Take the internet source and put it into it's own Word document (copying and pasting if necessary).

Now with both open, click on the Window menu. There should be an option to compare side by side. When you click on that, both documents are resized to be next to each other. A little toolbar opens has a few buttons. One of them allows you to control whether you scroll the 2 docs together ("synchronous scrolling"). By default it's on. If you turn it off, you can readjust one of the docs. You can then turn the synchronous scrolling back on. While you're in synchronous scrolling, you can move the horizontal or vertical scroll bars of either window and the other will follow.

I also should have mentioned the Compare feature found under the Tools menu. With this, Word will show you one document compare to another marked up using Reviewing features. That is, it will show where something was added to or deleted from one document relative to another. Using the Reviewing features with Word 2003, you can view the original or final documents with or without markup to see how one doc has to be changed to reach the other. I understand that if the docs are "very different" that Word may get confused but I'm not sure what that means in terms of how different they have to be.